Hachinohe Sansha Taisai Festival Part 1

We drove up to Hachinohe (about 40 minutes away) for the Sansha Taisai Festival. We knew the parade started around 3:00, so we drove up early so we could have time to find parking, eat, and explore the area. We found parking right across the street from the food vendors, and thought we were pretty lucky. We also noticed a pretty looking park right across from the parking lot.

We decided to get a closer look at the park and found this:

Next we ate lots of yummy festival food. We decided to branch out and try something new. This smelled so good, I had to try it:

We'll just say it was interesting and leave it at that. It was like a crepe stuffed with fried cabbage, ham, a soft-cooked egg; topped with more cabbage and lots of sauce. Mostly it was a mess to eat, and definitely not my favorite. With the sauce I felt like it was too many flavors. 

We found some other fun things close to the festival:

We still had lots of time before the parade, so we decided to explore a little bit. We found a little shrine tucked away next to a beautiful park.

We also found a playground and let the kids play for a while. C is obsessed with these things:

After playing for a while, it was time to find a good spot to watch the parade. You can see all the beautiful floats in my next post.